Elegy for Jane (Theodore Roethke)

I like poems, like this one, where they seem to be a page taken from the poet's journal. It doesn't seemed planned. Rather, it is like an outpouring of emotion made into sentences that just somehow flow together and happen to form a touchstone for everyone's thoughts and emotions. There is true talent in making the personal so universal.

Here, we have N who is a teacher of some kind writing an elegy for a student who has been killed after being thrown by a horse. It's so specific, yet it works for universality because as it says at the end "I, with no rights in this matter,/Neither father nor lover." Isn't that kind of the way it always is? I mean, I read in the paper today about a horrific crime where some lady tortured and killed a disabled man because she believed he had snitched years before. I don't know the lady. I don't know the man. Yet, the crime shook me up. It got into my bones. If I had thought of it, I would have, perhaps, written a poem much like this one in response to that man's senseless death.

I have to wonder if N really did have feelings for Jane. He says he's not her lover, but, perhaps, he means that literally and he really did have inappropriate feelings of love towards his student. Then this poem must have been the only release his poor heart had after her death. The emotion is so high is this poem.

Favorite line: "I speak the words of my love:/I, with no rights in this matter,/Neither father nor lover."

Pied Beauty (Gerard Manley Hopkins)

I do love this poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. I love the almost ridiculous over-(?)use of alliteration and the dizziness all that sound creates. I love how the wall of intense sound, the can't-cut-your-way-through-because-it's-so-tangled sound breaks only for the last line which was the impetus for Hopkins to write the whole thing: "Praise him."

The whole poem is a prayer of praise. I like how Hopkins' pure joy at the natural world around him is expressed. You (or rather I) can't read this poem without 1.) feeling a little baffled 2.) feeling happy.

I feel a little baffled since this poem doesn't ever (until the end) take a pause for a breath. He just throws adjective after adjective at you until all you are left with is not really a semblance of understanding, but rather a canvas full of brightly splattered paint and scribbles. It takes a second read-through for me to be able to distinguish shapes in that canvas.

But when I do, I cannot help but feel happier. It's hard not to feel happy when surrounded by or reading about people as supremely happy as N is in this poem. Ecstatically happy. And the fact that he is so intensely happy because of fish and songbirds and a cow? The depth he finds in those simple joys is enough to make anyone (er, me) break out in the hugest smile.

Favorite line: "GLORY be to God for dappled things—"

Holy Thursday (Paul Muldoon)

Through an uninteresting tangle of events I found this page on Paul Muldoon and this poem of his.

I think I love this poem. It's basically the same as yesterday's poem with the dissolution of love with no provided reason, but I actually feel the emotions stronger in this one. No rhyme, which helps, and the extended metaphor of the waiter, for me, really underscores the emotions of the poem.

The waiter eats his meal and then undoes any indication that he had been there. He drains the wine. He wipes the bowl clean with a piece of bread. He is so clean and polite. He even bows to his empty chair and table at the end.

The poem, for the couple, kind of starts the same way. At the beginning it says, "They're kindly here, to let us linger so late" which might as well be the opening to any romantic date. We don't find out that their love is soured until halfway through the second stanza. The start is like how the waiter had undone his presence after eating. Clearly, N knew from line one that the love was askew in the relationship, but gives no indication until much later in the poem. He, almost, was trying to undo what was really happening. However, he can't, and in the second stanza he breaks from this politeness and brings out the messy details of his relationship.

But I have to wonder, same for the waiter, who exactly, is the show/the polite act for? Two strangers? A bunch of anonymous readers? Probably the answer for both cases is simply himself. So, if that's the case then the waiter and N are more or less the same, and I get why the emotions are stronger in this one than in yesterday's. The poem simply goes into greater detail about what N is feeling.

Favorite line: "The waiter swabs his plate with bread/And drains what's left of his wine"

After Love (Sara Teasdale)

Browsing at random, I came upon After Love by Sara Teasdale. I, perhaps, should not have chosen this poem to talk about since it is so not my style. I couldn't care less about poems about love or poems that rhyme (in all seriousness). Ah well. Expanding horizons...

Love has surely gone from this couple. They, after all, "meet as other people do." Hmm, no indication of how or why the split occurred. Since she compares herself to the sea and him to the wind it would seem as though he stirred her up with no real purpose and then left as quickly as the sea breezes that pop up and dissipate do.

And I don't know, perhaps words like "surcease" were more in vogue 100 years ago, but to my ears it sounds so unusual. It sounds like a word that was discovered merely to fit the rhyme scheme. That is a big reason why I dislike rhyme in poems.

This is a fine poem, cool technical merit and all (with the rhyming and the syllabics (probably meter too if I cared to look for it)). I just don't care about it. I like more modern sounding poetry and while I think it's great that she wrote about love gone bad and how she feels after love has left, I want to know more of the story. I want a hint as to why the love affair ended.

Favorite line: "You work no miracle for me/ Nor I for you."

Watermelons (Charles Simic)

The thing about this blog is that it must be updated every day. (What was I thinking? Ah well. A promise is a promise. Even one made to myself.)

So I haven't known about Charles Simic for long, but since I really enjoyed his last poem I read and talked about I thought I would turn to him once again. And I managed to find his short(est?) one. Watermelons is only 15 words long. Which is sort of funny since watermelons are the giants of the fruit world.

This is a metaphor-ful poem. I thought it was apt to compare a watermelon to a smile. That is how the rind appears after the fruit has been eaten. Though, it does seem like he's calling the +fruit a smile. I don't really see that, but the image and connection are still there for me. I also thought it was spot-on to compare a watermelon to Buddha. Rounded bellies.

Don't get the larger point, but I don't think a poem always needs one or even has one. Perhaps the simplicity in Buddhism is reflected by this 15-word verse.

Favorite line: "Green Buddhas/On the fruit stand."

Childhood Is The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies (Edna St. Vincent Millay)

I don't know why people insist on centering text, but they do so to this poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay making it seem trite and kid-like. While it may be about childhood, it is definitely not kid-like and it is extremely non-trite.

I first found this poem years ago and as I read it I was in awe because yes, that's pretty much it. While I've not had anyone but my grandparents pass away, I remember getting the gravity of the situation when my close friend lost her mother. I remember how my grandparents' deaths affected my parents and it's true, I think, that a new chapter of a person's life begins at that point.

I do love this poem for its wisdom and for the emotionality it has. I cannot help but get a little choked up at the line "But you do not wake up a month from then, two months/A year from then, two years, in the middle of the night/And weep, with your knuckles in your mouth, and say Oh, God!/Oh, God!"

I think the poem loses its sharpness and bite from stanza four to the end. They are still valid and all, I just think they lack the greatness of the start of the poem. I wish the first three stanzas were a separate poem. Or perhaps, the latter stanzas indicate the arrival to adulthood. The last stanza just sounds so adult. It's not expansive anymore. Just short, declarative sentences. It's a tight, little block. It's totally dry-eyed. "And [then N will] leave the house." This poem mirrors this biblical passage in that way: "When I was a child, I spake as a child...but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

Favorite line: "Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies./Nobody that matters, that is."

Adam's Task (John Hollander)

I find this poem by John Hollander to be adorable. I can just imagine Adam, gleeful with his first real job, sitting on a high promontory pointing at passing animals and crying out, "Thou, paw-paw-paw; thou, glurd; thou, spotted/ Glurd; thou, whitestap".

The names he picks are simple, fun, and childlike. They also (way to go John Hollander) conjure up an image of what animal is being described. A "paw-paw-paw" just has to be some kind of large cat. A "glurd" would be a good name for a water ox.

It's Adam's first task and therefore he finds great joy in it. To be trusted with a task of that importance must have been quite swelling. This poem is a portrait of the first 23 animals and names. One sort of hopes that he maintained his glee for the next million-plus animals and that he never reached the point where he and the task would sink "to primitive" even though we know it must and that he did.

The last line sounds so childlike. The next line might as well be "I'm bored. Can I go now?" I suppose that is the indication that his task is not so new and shiny anymore. That he has lost his glee for his task. Ha! Maybe, Adam (the child) gave up the task for being too big and made God (the adult) name them instead. So we have names not like "glurd" and "grawl", but dull, sensible ones like house fly and blue jay.

Favorite line: "Thou, paw-paw-paw; thou, glurd; thou, spotted/ glurd"

Those Winter Sundays (Robert Hayden)

I've known this poem by Robert Hayden for years. I forget where I first ran across it. I find great comfort in it. It shows up, for me, every few years in new ways and with new perspectives. This poem is a constant, one that remains always full of compassion and truth no matter how or when you look at it.

I like how slowly this poem moves. How, when reading it, you are forced into a slow, even pace until the fantastic quickened concluding two lines. It is, wonderfully, reflective of the passage of years through which N gathers his understanding.

In Burt's class in college I had the task to take this poem and mark where the voice changes. I marked two lines as separate. The lines "No one ever thanked him" and "What did I know, what did I know/of love's austere and lonely offices?" differ from the rest of the poem in tone and in age. The whole poem is written many years past childhood, but while N is channeling childhood for the majority of the poem, for those two lines N speaks with an adult's voice--with a voice that can and has looked back and seen how he had misinterpreted his father's actions and intentions and feels the worse for having been so distant in youth.

Favorite line: "What did I know, what did I know/ of love's austere and lonely offices?"

I May, I Might, I Must (Marianne Moore)

More tiredness, another short poem: I May, I Might, I Must by Marianne Moore.

This is poetry. Condensed language--check. Precision of language--check. Title that truly adds to the meaning--check. Ability for a single piece to have multiple interpretations and applications--check.

I was in Yosemite a few months back and saw a fen for the first time. Grasses growing up in clear water. There is no solid ground and the grass would make for a tangled go if wading or boating.

I read through her bio quickly to see if my interpretation was correct. I see this poem as the determination to survive any medical disaster, be it cancer or broken bones. The steeliness, the straight-forwardness of the language made me so certain that Marianne Moore must have been diagnosed with cancer or some other terminal disease, but when I read through her bio there was no such mention. So, I suppose, the poem could be in reference to any tough situation. But, like I said, multiple applications/interpretations are the sure marks of a great poem. And this small stone of a poem is definitely a great poem.

Favorite line: "I think that I/can get across it if I try."

Man and Camel (Mark Strand)

Browsing poems for this evening's post I came across Man and Camel by Mark Strand.

I read it as I do all poems, slowly. Usually, when I come to the end of a poem I tend to turn and read it over once again. When I reached the end of this one I burst out laughing. I am pretty certain this poem is telling me that to search for deeper meaning is pointless and ruinous of a poem's art.

So, uh, sorry, Mr. Strand, but I have to talk about this poem, and to talk is to analyze. I'd be just like the man on the front porch trying to figure out the symbolism of the man and camel passing by. In fact, I was trying to do so as I read. I suppose I won't try any longer, since perhaps, Mark Strand picked two unusual figures for no other purpose but to make a point. I think he would laugh at me if I tried to decipher why a camel? And why were they singing?

But, Mr. Strand, point taken. Sometimes, a camel is just a camel. However, I think, by evidence of this blog, that all poems can be analyzed. To try to understand something is just so darn human I think we just can't not do it.

Favorite line: "Yet what they sang is still a mystery to me—/the words were indistinct and the tune/too ornamental to recall."

Bloody Men (Wendy Cope)

I woke up at 5 this morning and despite all logic am still not yet in bed. I need to talk shortly about an easily grasped poem so I can move on to bed. I thought that this poem would fit the bill. It took me many many minutes to track it down on the web. I don't know why Poets.org doesn't list Wendy Cope. She's a hoot.

Okay, brief run-down. It's funny. It's so like British humor you almost don't need verification of her country of origin.

I wish I could be so witty and still manage to rhyme. That's true great skill.

And gosh, I don't know, there really isn't more to say. After all, when you have to explain a joke it loses all its charm. This poem is funny. The end. I almost think that it is harder to write humor that is this appealing than it is to write a deep piece that scholars love.

Favorite line: "you'll stand there and gaze/ While the cars and the taxis and lorries go by/ And the minutes, the hours, the days."

Miracle Ice Cream (Adrienne Rich)

I like the poetry of Adrienne Rich based on this one poem she wrote reinterpreting John Donne that always shows up in the Norton Anthologies I had to read for class. When I searched for her on Poets.org they listed three poems of hers in the sidebar. I simply had to pick the one titled Miracle Ice Cream. I mean, I often find that ice cream is miraculous.

I like how one thing leads to another in poetry. How an ice cream truck can lead to thoughts concerning life as a whole and the 'adultness' of life.

In a poem this short you have to notice words that are repeated or emphasized. Repeated things: "pearl", "of your heart", "miracles" . Like how a pearl is only created under constant irritation and distress, perhaps, N is saying that the good parts in life, like Miracle ice cream, can only be appreciated against a background of "news," "fast-food," and "ghostly revolutions." Or maybe N's saying that ice cream, a childish desire, is simple and can still be enjoyed in adulthood as long as one part of the heart remains untarnished by that trio of "news," "fast-food," and "ghostly revolutions".

Wasn't quite the happy, frivolous poem I thought I was in store for from the title. That I suppose is exactly how "the pearl...dissolves." Here, I was expecting a cute ice-cream treat and instead am presented with the pain and loss of magic that happens in the transition from childhood to adulthood in two neat stanzas.

Favorite line: "Early now the pearl of dusk dissolves."

Early Rising (John Godfrey Saxe)

I had to be somewhere for a test this morning at 8 am. Thus, I had to wake up much too early for my taste and despite drinking many caffeinated things am very very tired this evening. I shall go to sleep extra early tonight, for sure. Based on the day's events I knew with certainty which poem I was going to write about tonight. Lucky for me, someone has put it online. The poem is the second one on the page.

I don't know when this poem was written, but based on the language I can assume it was quite some time ago. I like that the sentiments in the poem are so modern, despite the language. I imagine that John Saxe had been rudely awakened from a pleasant slumber and wrote this as a kind-of protest.

I like how he reasoned his argument. How it goes from great literary figures to Man to God. He pulls all the punches to convince people to his side. It is probably due to the times in which he wrote this poem that he uses such a formal rhyme scheme. Hopefully, he didn't hope to use rhyme and make a serious point. If this is a legit rant, I think he failed. It is so comic. I cannot read this poem without a smile and some laughter. "Blast the man..who first invented...that artificial cut-off, Early Rising!" Hee!

Favorite line: "'GOD bless the man who first invented sleep!'/ So Sancho Panza said, and so say I"

Happiness (A.A. Milne)

Yes, A. A. Milne wrote Winnie-the-Pooh. He also wrote this lovely, simple poem.

Because really, "that is...that." It needs not be more complex. Happiness is a simple as having a raincoat when it is raining. I like that this poem is so short. It says what it needs to in so few words, and yet is still funny and even cute (in a non-derogatory kind of way).

This poem also shows the excellence of a good title. The poem doesn't have to be more explicit because it's already there in the title of the thing. We know what the point is, so all we need are the details. And what details! Boots! A hat! A raincoat! There is a grandness in that kind of simplicity.

I don't know if this poem ever showed up in a Winnie-the-Pooh book, but it wouldn't surprise me if it did. It totally fits the simple warmth and kindness of those characters and that world.

Favorite line: "And that/(said John)/Is/That."

The Rain (Robert Creeley)

This poem is my favorite poem. I love the way it sounds. I love what it means to me.

I first read it in a poetry anthology I received in 9th grade that really ignited a love of poetry in me. Each poem was prefaced with a comment from a random person, not an academic, about why the subsequent poem was their favorite poem. For this poem's preface, the woman said that the first part was full of stress and jumbled meaning and that she only began to breath again once the lines "Love, if you love me..." started.

I think it was the first time I had ever heard that lines could be jumbled, unclear and yet still loved. That was very freeing, as a reader of poetry. It didn't much matter if I understood every single line or what every single word was doing there. It was the overall picture they created for me that mattered. It was the way they felt.

This poem feels, for me, as it did for the woman who chose it for that anthology, hectic at first, then calm and directed. I see it as this person sitting inside, perhaps seated by a window, hearing a rainstorm. At first, all N can think of is anxiety-filled: "What am I to myself". The way that Creeley writes these lines is hectic-making. They are hard to read. My breath stumbles over itself. But then it all brakes. The cure to this endless questioning, of finding oneself, is for N's love to come close.

At the end, N tells the love to "Be wet/with a decent happiness." That is, N tells the love to be like rain, the impetus for all the questions, but to also have a decent happiness--to have a calmness, a non-gleeful happiness. I think happiness like that is the same as to be contentedly secure. So, N is telling the love to be questioning, but to not get all worked up or anxious, to be calm with a satisfied happiness. The poem is about love as much as it is about rain and questions of self.

Favorite line: "Love, if you love me,/lie next to me."

Country Fair (Charles Simic)

I was unable to write a post yesterday because the internet connection at my house died. It magically restored itself at about midday today, so now I'm back at it. The poet for today I had no idea of until the leader of my workshop mentioned him in passing one day. I haven't spent much time with this poem, so all comments will be very off-the-cuff.

The poem is so simple. It could easily be written out in prose. I'm not lost at all when it comes to what went on. That, by itself, is a show of great writing. What I like in the poem is that the "whole show" includes both the dog, running after a stick, and the couple, drunk and laughing. That the show (and for that matter, the poem) allows for space to think of "other things" -- like the couple, their drunkenness and their lust is kind of great.

The country fair and poems are similar. They both start out showing one particular thing--"six-legged dog," "Country Fair," but they do so in such ways that the viewer/the reader can meander from the stated topic and get what they can from the show. Is it wrong that N focused as much on the kissing couple as he did the dog? Is it wrong that instead of getting that the poem is a picture of the country fair, I see a bigger point?

Favorite line: "If you didn't see the six-legged dog,/It doesn't matter."

Next Day (Randall Jarrell)

I flew back home, to Nashville, today and am feeling very tired. This poem and poet both deserve more time, but I think it'll just have to be the highlights for me tonight. Since I have come back to Nashville I thought I should pick a local poet. Well, Randall Jarrell was born in Nashville and he went to the same high school I did. So, he's very local.

I first came across this poem in an anthology back in high school. The person who had picked it wrote that they could not get over how well a man got into the head of a middle-aged woman. Not yet middle-aged, I can still marvel, even though I don't fully feel many of the emotions. It is incredible.

It's also an incredible poem. I remember back in poetry class how Professor Burt had loved that in each stanza of the poem a word is repeated. (Such as Joy, all, "see me") That is, nothing "is exceptional." All lives are common, after all. The tone is everyday tragic since that is sort of sad--the shared loneliness of life, but like the N in the poem there is an inertia too. It's not like N wants to shake up her life. She has children, a husband. She just wants the banal pleasure of having the check-out boy look at her. Perhaps, that inertia is also why words are repeated in the stanzas. Perhaps they're in there to show how common things are and how inertia keeps new things from arriving or anything from changing.

Favorite line: "Wisdom, said William James,/ Is learning what to overlook. And I am wise/ If that is wisdom."

Dream Song #14 (John Berryman)

What I know about John Berryman: He's from MN. If not actually born there, he is well associated with the state. He committed suicide by jumping off a bridge in Minneapolis into the Mississippi River. He wrote a series of "Dream Songs," this being #14. The Henry he mentions in the poem is in other Dream Songs as well. Henry is John Berryman, an alter-ego, if you will.

Knowing that, I think, is essential to the poem. I mean, he is bored even with himself. He is criticizing Henry as if he were a separate person. So, he distances himself from Henry. He distances himself from everything because there at the end it says that the only things remaining are "me, wag." The only things that remain are a stripped John Berryman and the afterimage of an inconsequential action. That is, at the end, the only things that are left don't mean very much at all, which is rather damning since he includes himself in that collection.

I think this poem is both tragic, as an insight into a depressed person's thoughts, and funny, as in the opening stanza's remembrances of the mother's warning/advice. And it is, perhaps, that I am reading this poem as more tragedy-filled than it wants. I mean, it is funny. But I can't help but insert the poet's personal history into this poem and hear depression despite the light-hearted tone.

Favorite line: "Life, friends, is boring."

The Space Heater (Sharon Olds)

I was at a bar with the leader of my workshop when he asked what modern writers I liked. I mentioned this poem and this writer. He groaned at the mention of her name saying that she was emblematic of the problems with modern poetry. I can't speak to that, but the poem is kind of great.

At first, I wished the lines were more even and I wished for my own ease of reading that there was more than the single long stanza. But I find that the raggedness reflects N's (N as in the Narrator) state of mind. And I think the length of the poem just goes to show how N's revelation came all at once. It wasn't preplanned. Therefore, it could not have been in stanzas with even line lengths. This way it looks more organic, like she wrote it all down in a rush into her journal.

I'm a little confused by the last bit, what exactly the revelation is if I were to write it in prose, but I like the feel of it. I sense a heat from it which is kind of great since it all started with wanting to turn off the room's heater, but then she goes and supplants it with her own heated words and connections. I didn't feel the heat or hear the "group of sick noises" from the space heater before, but at the end, with her tightly tied conclusion, I totally feel it. The pattern of repeated words is almost a bit much and if the poem had gone on for much longer I, like N did the space heater, would have wanted it to stop.

Absolute favorite line: "And I was so moved, that he/would act undignified, to help me,/that I cried"

What is this?

Okay, so I stole the idea. Someone I knew in high school has started a similar blog where she, in order to become better read, picks two poems every day and discusses what she likes in them. I thought, "brilliant!" I have a workshop, but I am frustrated that we never talk about poetry in general let alone with any specificity. That is, we never talk about any poems but our own. Not that this one-sided 'conversation' will fill the need, but at least it will force me to think and read new poems. Maybe I'll even get better at reading and understanding poetry. So, here's the idea: I will read a poem every day. Then, I will write briefly about what I like and what I think it's all about.